p, as usual, in the morning to read Dante with her. He came
through the house unannounced and entered the library where the lovers
were bending with their heads close together over the map on which
Gabrielle had followed the course of Radway's West Indian voyages, and,
being engrossed in these tender reminiscences, they did not see him.
He stood in the doorway, gazing, uncertain as to what he should say or
do. In his seventeen years at Clonderriff he had got out of the way of
dealing with social problems.

At last Gabrielle looked up, saw him, and blushed. She hastened to
introduce Radway: "The friend I met in Dublin" ... as if there had been
only one.

By this time Considine had recovered himself. He shook hands with
Radway heartily and talked to him about the shooting. In those few
moments it was the man and not the parson who appeared, and Radway,
frankly, took him at his own valuation and liked him.

"Quite a good sort, your padre," he said to Gabrielle afterwards, and
she was glad that he was pleased. For herself it had never occurred to
her to consider whether he was good or bad. To her he had never been
anything more than a figure: Mr. Considine: but it pleased her that
anything associated with her should give her lover pleasure. Considine
was sufficiently tactful not to mention Dante, and Gabrielle solved his
difficulty by asking him for a short holiday during Radway's stay. He
coughed and said he would be delighted, and since he did not offer to
go they left him in the library.

From the first he must have seen how things were. At the best he was a
lonely man, and this must have seemed the last aggravation of his
loneliness. I do not suppose he considered that he was in love with
Gabrielle, but he was undoubtedly attached to her, for he was not an
old man nor vowed to celibacy, and it had been his leisurely delight to
watch her beauty unfolding. Leisurely ... because he was slow in
everything, slow in his speech, slow to anger, and slow to love--which
does not imply that he was without intelligence or feeling or sex. It
would not be fair to dismiss the feelings of Considine as unimportant;
but it would be even less fair to sentimentalize them, for the least
thing that can be said of him is that he was not sentimental himself.
When they left him he tried to persuade himself that he was not jealous
by settling down to the composition of his weekly sermon; but he did
not risk any further disturban